Obama proves the Ugly American still defines US foreign policy

Yeah – I put in just enough to illustrate continuity

Latin American leaders slammed European governments on Wednesday for diverting Bolivian President Evo Morales’ plane on rumors it was carrying a wanted former U.S. spy agency contractor, adding a new diplomatic twist to the Edward Snowden saga.

Bolivia said Morales was returning from Moscow on Tuesday when France and Portugal abruptly banned his plane from entering their airspace due to suspicions that Snowden, wanted by Washington for leaking secrets, was onboard. Italy and Spain also banned the plane from their skies, it said.

The unusual treatment of the Bolivian military aircraft touched a sensitive nerve in the region, which has a history of U.S.-backed coups. Regional leaders, particularly from the left, rallied behind Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president and a former union leader of the country’s coca farmers.

“(These are) vestiges of a colonialism that we thought were long over. We believe this constitutes not only the humiliation of a sister nation but of all South America,” Argentine President Cristina Kirchner said in a speech in Buenos Aires.

“Latin America demands an explanation,” tweeted Ecuadorean leader Rafael Correa. “If what happened to Evo does not merit a Unasur summit, I don’t know what does.”

Dilma Rousseff, president of regional economic powerhouse Brazil, issued a statement repudiating the European countries that denied Morales access to their airspace based on what she called the “fanciful” notion that Snowden might be on board…

Much more blunt was the statement from Mexico’s Congress condemning what it called the “disgraceful and discriminatory” treatment Morales had received in Europe…

Spokesmen ranging from petty bureaucrats in France to tame professors in Chicago offered predictable plausible deniability. RTFA if you think you need to.

The Bolivian government said it had filed a formal complaint with the United Nations and was studying other legal avenues to prove its rights had been violated under international law…

In May of this year, Morales expelled a U.S. development agency from Bolivia in protest after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry referred to Latin America as Washington’s “backyard.”

Ugly American is a pejorative that refers to loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless, ignorant, and ethnocentric behavior of Americans abroad…including the actions of our government and its leaders. We used the term a lot during the resistance to the VietNam War. Taking it from the book by Burdick and Lederer, it characterized the lies and deceit perfectly agreed to by Democrats and Republicans alike in the rape and murder of Southeast Asia.

In the early 19th Century our government warned the world of the Monroe doctrine. It meant Latin America was our own private Africa. Europeans had to maintain their retreat from the continent of South America under threat of war with the United States. Resources, the natural wealth of South America was reserved for American corporations.

The average ignorant American voter may have to Google the details; but, no Latin American with even a minimal education has any difficulty describing the policy. Only speechwriters for US political campaigns and Congressional declarations try to convince the rest of the world it ever ended.

2 comments

Very interesting, powerful and factual post, though I agree with Mexico – the actions of France, Italy and Portugal – and Austria were quite reprehensible. Portugal’s claim that “technical difficulties stopped the plane from flying over their territory or landing is scandalous and would have received an ‘F’ in 2nd grade. Unbelievably – and REALLY unbelievably, the Spanish ambassador in Vienna suggested to Morales they have a coffee ON BOARD the plane a a plan to see if Snowden was ‘cunningly’ hiding behind a seat. Morales of course refused, stating he was not some “common thug” engaged in smuggling. Appalling.

Beautiful. I can’t tell you how much I agree. The arrogance of Americans abroad is abhorrent; tourists and the government.
The arrogance we have displayed seems counter to our stated intent when this country was founded.
Hmm.
“Give us your tired; your poor; your huddled masses; yearning to breath free.
We can fuck them just as well as you can and we have real estate to store the lowlife bastards.”

Did I get that quote wrong? Our own private Africa huh? I like that; though I can’t guess why we would need our own Africa. We already did our best to transport and enslave the real one.

Now there is an excellent question for discussion. Why did we chose Africans for our labor needs? Why not South Americans. They were a lot closer. I guess the Spanish and Portuguese had them all enslaved. Only so many unwilling bodies to go around.
Ah well; I digress so I will end.
Peace